truth-seeker, or both? Does it say that what happens to such a type is that
he always comes to no good, or that heprobablycomes to no good? Does
it tell us that we should try to accept our fate or that it doesn’t matter
whether or not we try to accept our fate? If it tells us something universal
about humans, is it that knowing the truth about ourselves would ruin
us, or is it that we all secretly want to kill our fathers and marry our
mothers (and that this knowledge could be therapeutic)?
All in all, it’s not very clear which kind of thingorkind of personor
general trutha complex play likeOedipusorHamletcan be said to depict.
To put the point another way: we said that the universal claims are not
uttered explicitly, but rather are implied by the action; the problem that
we are facing here is that it’s difficult (which is not to say impossible) to
say justwhatis being implied.
By highlighting the difficulty of pinning down which universals are
implied by a theatrical performance, I do not wish to suggest thatno
universals are implied or that nobody learns from theatre in this way. But
our discussion of Aristotle’s view raises a significant concern. As we have
seen, hunting for explicit formulations of universal propositions that
are (supposedly) implied in plays is a difficult business. If it’s open to the
individual spectator to derive certain implications into one universal
proposition or another, then we are no longer talking about a straight-
forward instance of‘learning’from true propositions (implicitly) expressed
in the play; instead, we are talking about a kind of interaction between
spectator and performance, in which the spectator develops or reflects
upon her own views in relation to the play. There is nothing wrong with
this, and indeed it may be an important part of what we enjoy about and
take from good theatre. But this is not best characterised as‘learning truths’
from a performance. If it is a kind of learning, then it’s not clear that
anything in the performance itself needs to amount to a truth, implicit or
otherwise; all that’s required is a certain kind of provocation or stimula-
tion to thought. I don’t suppose anyone would deny that theatre is able to
offer that.
Non-propositional learning: learning how and learning that
Particular plays may convey certain messages–taken to be true by some
spectators–either via what is uttered or via what is implied. In both
cases, we have been talking about a play communicating to a spectator
the claim that something is the case (a claim that may or may not be
true). Philosophers often distinguish between knowingthatsomething is
the case (e.g. I know that a bicycle has two wheels) and knowinghowto
do something (e.g. I know how to ride a bicycle). On a standard view,
knowing how differs from knowing that in at least two ways: first,
54 From the World to the Stage